Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice. Pull down your pants, and slide on the ice.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Intellectual Clutter

Over the years, I have collected a substantial quantity of motivational material. It's in the form of books, cassette tape, CD, and now in mp3. It started around 1982, when my cousin got me involved in Amway. He told me that I was going to be rich! All I had to do was follow the plan and that included listing to a tape a day and read a book a week. All that was well and good, but I also had a full time job and was a new father. But the books sounded good. And they must have been popular since the shelves at Goodwill have several copies of any popular self help title.

But there are 2 things about me that are important to this post: I have always been easy to persuade, and I'm a pack rat. The latter is an inherited condition. I'm still going through belongings of my mother and brother. Mom's been gone 7 years and Ricky, 3 years. And now back to the post.

My cousin told me to read some classic titles, such as Psycho Cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz, and Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. Both of these books have some great content, but have a tendency to be boring. Now a classic I do love and have read many times is How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. I also have this book on cassette.

Modern authors, whose works I love are folks like Zig Ziglar, John Maxwell and Mark Sanborn. Zig has been a favorite for many years. this began when I used to listen to a program he had on the radio, called Daily Christian Motivation. This led me to look for some of books, and See You at the Top soon became my all time favorite motivational book.

Mark Sanborn, in my book, is a classic good guy. I have fully recommended his book, The Fred Factor on this blog and he thanked me via the comment section. The Fred Factor is a book Mark wrote about Fred Shea, his one time postal carrier, one who took an ordinary job and performed extraordinary duties with it. A good read and an excellent listen as an audio book as read by the author. Mark and I have also chatted via email and facebook chat. Mark even has posted responses to my Question of the Day. I wholeheartedly recommend you check out his site and invest in some of his leadership materials.

Problem is with all these good authors and good books, there are also those who come up with some catchy titles and would have done well to have stopped there, and I own some of those. And I need to weed my intellectual garden. This requires getting down hard on the lone who is most resistant to it, ME! You have no idea how many diet books I have passed up in the most recent past. I do have the understanding that no book helps you lose weight, you have to do this yourself. I just have to get my motivational and inspirational material pared down to a workable pile.

Cliff Note: Mark Sanborn, if you have time, please stop by and say hi to my friends, which now includes many of my high school classmates. And if you don't mind please offer some of your valuable insight.

Band videos courtesy of Matthew Killough

The videos of the Rittman Indians Marching Band were recorded at various band shows by Rittman resident Matthew Killough, who writes his own blog, Wixy Rittman High Band Gone Bananas. He happens to be a very avid fan of the band.